Any construct that acts to produce copies of itself; this could be a living organism, an idea (see meme ), a program (see quine , worm , wabbit , fork bomb , and virus ), a pattern in a cellular automaton (see life ), or (speculatively) a robot or nanobot . It is even claimed by some that Unix and C are the symbiotic halves of an extremely successful replicator; see Unix conspiracy .
[ Jargon File ]